For the living

Last weekend I went to the funeral for a classmate of one of my sons. He wasn’t a close friend of my son, but my wife and I worked with his parents for a few years volunteering with the marching band (band parents). I won’t go into details about the funeral because it is a private matter for their family, but it did get me to thinking about my own mortality and how I want to handle my affairs.
I am getting to that age where I am beginning to believe that I may actually die someday. That makes me sound dense, but there is a difference between knowing and believing. I have always known that the historical occurrence of death if 1:1. There has never been an incidence of anyone getting out alive. But deep down most people don’t really believe that in X number of years they will no longer be among the living. If they did people may make better plans. I haven’t been to many funerals, but most seem to be like a party that was put together with input from everyone but the host. I decided that I want more input about the planning of my last party.
Of course I have a will, but it is basically a document that states who gets all the crap I have horded through my life. Most of which will probably end up in a dumpster or an estate sale. What I want is to detail not only the activities during my funeral, but now that we have the technology, to host it as well.
Imagine how cool it would be to have a video screen/controller combination that would allow me to host my own funeral. I could introduce speakers, say a few words, choose the music, tell a few jokes, and in the end tell everyone to go home have a drink and go to bed. Of course this will all be connected to the internet so I could do a live video feed and share my funeral with friends and family that can’t for some reason travel. Just to make things interesting and entertaining I will have some way to identify guests and have the system dispense gifts. I think this would be a lot of fun. Everyone who attends should walk away with something. This would be especially amusing if the person receiving the gift has the opportunity to share the story behind it. It gives me an excuse to collect all kind of crap in anticipation of handing out odd and interesting trinkets to friends and family.
And since the technology is available, I would also like to set up a blog that updates weekly for a few months after I have gone. Followers would get entertaining updates about what the after life is like, who I meet, and what the place is like.
So if you happen to attend my funeral sometime in the distant future (I hope), expect a large video screen, an automated vending machine and a lot of weirdness.
It looks like I have a lot of work to do.
pf